Brainstorming is a structured process to capture a group’s ideas relating to a topic or issue. Having a structured approach to how you brainstorm increases the quality and efficiency of your efforts. The process below gives you that structured approach. If you use it you won’t waste your participant’s time and you’ll get a lot of great ideas.
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At the start of a project / program it’s important to get a handle on the current situation. Appreciating your strengths, studying opportunities, pinpointing weaknesses and identifying threats is a prudent way to kick you off in the right direction. Otherwise you may stop things that you shouldn’t or spend time, energy and money on stuff that you really should be avoiding at all costs. A great activity to run with your team to achieve this is a SWOT Analysis.
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The Projects Early Adopter Program Has Closed If you would like to be notified the next time we open registrations click the button below and leave your email. Join The Waiting List Your Questions Answered… How will you attract clients and projects to the platform? 3 ways – organically through the WorkshopBank website, paid marketing […]
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by Nick MartinThis might be the most important piece I’ve ever written about facilitation, training and consulting.My only worry is that I say too much here about our future strategy. Ultimately, however, I’m a huge believer in transparency. I believe that real progress comes through execution, not just ideas.This post is our thesis on the […]
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This is Part 1 of a series of posts I’ve wanted to write since I started WorkshopBank back in 2009.Right now, WorkshopBank is gearing up to release something that I’ve been dreaming about since 2014. It’s taken 3 years to get to here, and I’m feeling a mixture of restlessness and excitement. More about that […]
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Open Space Technology (OST) is an event format used in meetings of 5 to 2,000 people, invented by Harrison Owen in 1985. Participants create the agenda for themselves and facilitators lead and record the resulting discussions. There’s a twist in this version with the inclusion of a process that gives the organizers a little more control over the agenda. While keeping all the benefits the participants feel from ownership of the day itself.
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This team activity allows your group to surface project and operational barriers to success and deal with them as either Facts or Beliefs. Barriers and Beliefs should be dealt with in different ways. Use this activity to categorise them as one or the other then it’s much easier for your group to create an implementation or remediation plan.
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Group Decision Making Analysis is a team building exercise providing an opportunity for team members to discuss and agree how they can improve decision making. Unlike a lot of the tools and techniques on WorkshopBank it focuses on improving only 1 key process – how to make decisions in a better way. Most groups and teams can improve that side of the way they work don’t you think? This process helps them get there quickly.
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Do you want all your key stakeholders pushing with, or against, you and your objectives? A Fishbowl Discussion is a technique used to help a large group of people reach a common understanding on a set of issues or proposal and increase their feeling of participation. In a relatively short amount of time.
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Customer Journey Mapping is a highly effective change management activity that helps you and your group reach a shared understanding on the key events, touch points, and activities that your customers receive. Once you have your map you can quickly and easily identify what’s working well (good practice) and not so well (areas for improvement).
Continue readingMost workshops you run are likely face to face events with all the participants in the room together. Is that right? You start with some objectives, design a process, get everyone together, run it and at the end you achieve your mission. But what if you want to involve more people than can fit in […]
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The Balanced Scorecard is a workshop technique for establishing the most useful high level measures by which to monitor your company’s / unit’s progress and performance against its strategic goals. It’s a great team building activity, process management tool and, when you do it properly, you end up with an action plan that’s fully aligned the company’s strategic plan.
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The World Cafe is a 20 year old workshop activity that draws on 7 design principles to create a simple, effective, and flexible format for hosting large group discussions for between 12 to 200 participants. The format is flexible and adapts to many different circumstances limited only by your imagination.
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Team Roles & Responsibilities is an activity using a simple template to document roles and responsibilities of those involved in a project. Use this process to assign roles and responsibilities to members of your change / project team and to ensure that the team as a whole can proceed on a firm footing.
Continue readingIn Session 6 of The WorkshopBank Podcast, I’m talking to Paul Z Jackson who is co-founder and President of the Applied Improvisation Network. He’s on the show to introduce Applied Improvisation as a facilitation technique and show what it can do for you and the groups of people you work with. You’ll learn how improvisation […]
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Have you ever seen or created an action plan for a project that failed during delivery? This Brown Paper Planning process is a project plan template that will dramatically increase your chance of success.
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Team Review Workshop is an activity ready-made for any team meeting. It helps you build a shared understanding within a team about what is working well, areas in need of improvement and areas of opportunity. There is very little facilitation involved as it is easy for people to grasp what they have to do and why they are doing it. A great stimulator of conversation within the group.
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The Trading Game is a team building workshop that simulates the negotiating activities that may need to take place between different departments or organisations in the setting up of joint ventures.
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Stakeholder Mapping is a graphical illustration of how your stakeholders feel towards your change project or program. It helps you to identify who you need to influence and what action you need to take. It’s one of the most powerful change management processes on WorkshopBank and a must-do activity for any project manager.
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The Fishbone Diagram (also known as the Ishikawa diagram) is used to identify all the factors that have an impact on your problem. It is primarily an issue analysis technique but it also has a motivational and team building effect on participants as they go through the process. There’s nothing like building a shared understanding of a tricky problem to unite a team.
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